Fifteen years ago, Rebecca D. Costa challenged us all to address the danger we were facing. In her book, The Watchman’s Rattle: A Radical New Theory of Collapse, published in 2010, she said,

                “Today, the issues that threaten human existence are clear: an intractable global recession, powerful pandemic viruses, terrorism, rising crime, climate change, rapid depletion of the earth’s resources, nuclear proliferation, failing education.”

                Her mentor, the eminent biologist and naturalist Edward O. Wilson, who wrote the foreword to her book summed up our predicament this way:

                “We have paleolithic emotions; medieval institutions; and God-like technology. And it is terrifically dangerous, and it is now approaching a point of crisis overall.”

              The problems have gotten even more critical since then. Fortunately, Costa offered practical solutions and other experts have offered ideas about what we can do now.

                When I was an undergraduate at U.C. Santa Barbara I had the good fortune to experience a class with the great philosopher Paul Tillich. His words have guided my life’s work ever since:

               “Every serious thinker must ask and answer three fundamental questions:

1. What is wrong with us? With men? Women? Society? What is the nature of our alienation? Our dis-ease?

2. What would we be like if we were whole? Healed? Actualized? If our potentiality was fulfilled?

3. How do we move from our condition of brokenness to wholeness? What are the means of healing?”

                To heal our brokenness and find our way to more vibrant, long-lasting, and satisfying relationships, we need to understand our history and where we got off track.

For most of human history humans recognized that we were fellow beings in the community of life on planet Earth. We were partners, not dominators. In their book Nurturing Our Humanity: How Domination and Partnership Shape Our Brains, Lives, and Future, Riane Eisler and Douglas P. Fry, report research demonstrating that

                “for more than 99 percent of the approximately two million years since the emergence of a recognizable human animal, man has been a hunter and gatherer.” Eisler and Fry call their way of life, “The original partnership societies.”

               As Riane Eisler says in her book, The Chalice & The Blade: Our History, Our Future,

                “Underlying the great surface diversity of human culture are two basic models of society. The first, which I call the dominator model, is what is popularly termed either patriarchy or matriarchy—the ranking of one half of humanity over the other. The second, in which social relations are primarily based on the principle of linking, may best be described as the partnership model.”

                When did domination systems come into being? Some say it began 10,000 years ago with the advent of agriculture. More recent research by environmental scientist Dr. James DeMeo and reported in his book, Saharasia: The 4000 BCE Origins of Child Abuse, Sex-Repression, Warfare and Social Violence in the Deserts of the Old World, says that it occurred around 6,000 years ago and was caused by a severe climate crisis that lasted for generations. Philosopher and psychologist Sam Keen, author of Fire in the Belly: On Being a Man, describes our situation this way:  

                “The simple truth, which we have conspired to forget during the last century, is that the human species is an integral part of an incomprehensible unity of being in the process of becoming: a single organ in the body of Gaia.” 

               Keen goes on to say:

“The radical vision of the future rests on the belief that the logic that determines either our survival or our destruction is simple:

• We can only know what we touch.”
• The new human vocation is to heal the earth.
• We can only heal what we love.
• We can only love what we know.

               Clearly Keen is referring to our relationships. If humans fail to adapt, life on Earth will go on without us. It is our relationships that must change. There is good news and bad news. The good news is that we have a long history, more than 2,000,000 years, of sustainable partnership practices that can guide us.

The bad news is that many people still refuse to wake up and accept the truth. For those who can handle and embrace the present challenge, this is your time to step up and take action.  It’s time for us to get back in touch with who we truly are. It’s time we woke up from the destructive disconnection from the earth, ourselves, and each other, and return to our partnership roots.

As historian Thomas Berry warned:

               “We never knew enough. Nor were we sufficiently intimate with all our cousins in the great family of the earth. Nor could we listen to the various creatures of the earth, each telling their own story. The time has now come, however, when we will listen or we will die.”

The Sinking of the Ship of Civilization: What I Learned From The Vision I Was Given in 1993

                In 1993, I attended a Men’s Leaders’ Conference in Indianapolis, Indiana. One of the activities offered was a traditional Native-American sweat lodge ceremony where we had the opportunity ask for guidance and support for ourselves and our communities. I had a vision where I saw the Sinking Ship of Civilization as well as Lifeboats for the Sustainable Future. I have written about the vision and what I’ve learned in numerous articles. Here is the most recent.  

                I continue to learn and get a better understanding of what we can do including the following:

1. Give “Civilization” its proper name.

As long as we accept the belief that “civilization” is the pinnacle of human achievement we will never take action that can save us. In 1999 world-renowned scientist Dr. Jared Diamond wrote an article, “The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race,” in which he said that the advent of agriculture, the first step toward civilization, “may have been our greatest blunder.”  

A more accurate name for this stage of humanity, which we have been living during one-half of one-percent of human history would better be named the “dominator model” as described by Riane Eisler.

2. There is a better way of life beyond “civilization.”

                In 1992, I was given the book Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn. It offered a clear vision of the two worlds that are competing for our attention: A world where hierarchy and dominance rule (Quinn calls it the world of the Takers) and a world where equality and connection rule (Quinn calls it the world of the Leavers. In his book, Beyond Civilization: Humanity’s Next Great Adventure, published in 1999, Quinn says,

                “Beyond civilization isn’t a geographical space up in the mountains or on some remote isle. It’s a cultural space that opens up among people with new minds.”

3.   Changing our minds is not easy, but there are guides that can help us.

Dr. Eric Maisel is a long-term friend and colleague. He is an internationally respected diplomat coach who specializes in creativity coaching, existential wellness coaching, and relationship coaching. He is the author of more than fifty books including Brave New Mind: The Art of Serene Readiness. Maisel begins by telling us why a brave new mind is absolutely crucial today:

                “We’ve all been rushing about with no chance of catching up. We desperately need a brave new mind that can take into account our brave new world, a world at once strange and inhuman, awash with material good and loneliness, orchestrated by feckless billionaires more powerful than governments, where our conversations are with AI chat boxes and our thinking is reduced to refining the questions that we ask AI.”

                Kyra Bobinet, M.D., MPH, author of The Unstoppable Brain: The New Science of Tranquility, Transformation, and Healing” says,

                “There’s a newly discovered, but little known, secret to your brain that is robbing you of y our freedom and power to live the life you long for. It is also causing you to lose your motivation to do what you know is best for you or others, leaving you stuck.”

She goes on to say, “What is this secret? The habenula, an area of the brain that has two superpowers over your behavior. First, it acts as a failure detector anytime you think you failed, even in some tiny way, even subconsciously without your knowing. Second, and more impactful, it is a kill switch for your motivation. This means that whenever you think you have failed at something, you will suddenly find yourself unmotivated to keep going.”

I had never heard of the habenula before, but I reached out to Dr. Bobinet, interviewed her, and wrote the following article. “The Unstoppable Brain: The New Science of Tranquility, Transformation, and Healing.”

What I learned from my sweat-lodge vision is that most people will remain in denial and go down with the ship. We can’t change people until they are ready to change. No one articulates this wisdom better than Mel Robbins in her podcasts and #1 New York Times bestselling book, The Let Them Theory. She says,

               “If you’re struggling to change your life, achieve your goals, or feel happier, I want you to hear this: The problem isn’t you. The problem is the power you unknowingly give to other people.”

                There is no one who has offered greater guidance for a return to our partnership roots than Dr. Harville Hendrix and his wife Dr. Helen LaKelly Hunt. They are internationally respected couple’s therapists, speakers, and New York Times bestselling authors. Together, they have written twelve books with more than four million copies sold, including the timeless classic, Getting the Love You Want,  which was on the NYTimes best seller list eleven times. The book caught the attention of Oprah Winfrey and they were guests on her show 17 times over a twenty-year period. 

In their most recent book, How to Talk with Anyone About Anything: The Practice of Safe Conversations, Harville and Helen describe their audacious global social movement to shift from an individualistic civilization that embodies values like competition, control, domination and winning to a relational civilization that embodies the values of personal freedom, total equality, radical inclusiveness and celebration of diversity.

They propose that the engine of this transformation in civilization is to shift from monological talking that leads to tension, conflict, violence and war to dialogical conversations where people experience safety and connecting. In a relational civilization, the process of social interaction are collaboration, co-creation and cooperation that leads to connecting beyond difference.

Such social cohesion and cooperation transform conflict into safety and facilitates and sustains local and global peace. They estimate that by 2050, the world will contain 9.8 billion people. By then, if they can train the tipping point, which is 30% or 2.4 billion people, in dialogue, the entire world will change the way they relate and replace conflict with peace everywhere. Come join the movement.

                I would like to hear from you. My articles appear every week on my website, www.MenAlive.com. Drop me a note at [email protected].